Ways to Make Quality and Compliance Your Competitive Advantage: A Step-by-Step Guide

Stu Johnson

Mar. 28, 2017

Modern Manufacturing

If you’re like a lot of manufacturers, quality compliance is more of a paper chase than it is an operational strategy. But the truth is, by moving beyond minimum quality requirements, you can reach a higher level of process and product expertise that would not have been possible any other way. Given the chance to exceed customer expectations, why just be satisfied with the basic requirements?

Here are the steps many of our customers have taken to up-level quality compliance, and their competitive advantage:

1. Create a single system of record.

For any compliance and quality management strategy to succeed, there must be a single system of record that guides your quality objectives. Consolidating multiple, on-premises legacy ERP systems with a single, unified cloud ERP system that can scale with the business just makes more economic sense.

2. Free up your quality resources.

According to research by Aberdeen Group, custom legacy ERP systems that were designed to meet varying business models provide correct data only 30 percent of the time (or less). When you consolidate or replace these legacy systems, you free your teams up from simply collecting data to analyzing and using data to solve business problems.

3. Develop a continual improvement mindset.

Take into account supplier quality levels and tooling requirements, then create Corrective Action Preventative Action (CAPA) workflows to create a cycle of continuous improvement and to manage complaints from customers, process variations, and production inconsistencies.

4. Become data driven.

Compliance, quality control, and manufacturing operations should be aligned to your strategic objectives. Using clear performance metrics for quality control, and a series of manufacturing and operations metrics to track quality and collaboration can help you maintain this alignment.

5. Track and record everything.

At a minimum, your quality management ERP software system needs to track and report variability reduction, cycle time reduction, and risk mitigation across each manufacturing plant or location.

Don’t allow compliance to be a burden. Take the opportunity to make quality compliance a competitive differentiator.